Greenberg review

Greenberg review - Walking-rug Robin Williams, rubber-chinned Jim Carrey and man-child Adam Sandler are just a few modern funny people who’ve aced going straight. But chimp-faced Ben Stiller has mostly been happy to play the fool. Until now.

Staring out of gaunt eye-sockets and sporting big hair that (tellingly) he really should have cut by now, Stiller effortlessly nails the horrid selfishness and neurosis of Roger Greenberg, a fortysomething failed musician who’s housesitting for his successful brother after a stint in a mental hospital.

Self-involved and prickly as hell, Greenberg is “trying to do nothing for a while”. He reconnects with old friends (Rhys Ifans, excellent) he’s spent years alienating. He writes pedantic complaint letters to Starbucks, airlines, The LA Times... but doesn’t send them. He builds a doghouse. Life goes on – without him.

Like his breakout The Squid And The Whale (husband vs wife) and Margot At The Wedding (sister vs sister), writer/director Baumbach’s sixth movie deals with how “hurt people hurt people”, as quipped by Florence (indie starlet Greta Gerwig), the vague 25-year-old who’s looking after the house and the family dog. Her non-relationship with Roger starts with her meek acceptance of his abrupt lunge at her.

It continues as a series of awkward, compulsive little encounters. Wandering along a series of anti-climaxes in an empty LA, shot by Zodiac’s master DoP Harris Savides, the movie touchingly, subtly mirrors Roger and Florence: adrift in their own lives, him too closed, her too open.

Baumbach’s loose screenplay hits its prickly peak at a houseparty. As Stiller’s Gen X loser finds his lodgings taken over by twentysomething hipsters with no worries and lots of cocaine, he hisses: “I hope I die before I end up meeting any of you in a job interview.”

Self-conscious, sad, funny, awkward, small, mean... Greenberg the movie is like Greenberg the man: not much fun to hang out with but hard to forget.